


how empty an absence is

by crookedspoon



Series: JayDick Flashfic [11]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Mortality, POV Jason Todd, Past Character Death, Tumblr: JayDick Flash Fanwork Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22929607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: Thanatopsis.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: JayDick Flashfic [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1274147
Comments: 16
Kudos: 82
Collections: Jaydick Flash Fanwork Challenge





	how empty an absence is

**Author's Note:**

> Written for "Anniversary" at jaydick-flashfic.
> 
> Ignore this. I needed to prove to myself that I could still stitch random words together, even if they went nowhere. The first and third paragraph of this are actually from August of last year (written either for another flashfic prompt or a music-based flash-fic, the accounts are conflicting); the prompt reminded me of them and so I shook them out to see what else would follow.

It's crisp nights in April that find Jason scuffing his boots over the damp grass at Gotham Cemetery, the memory of an Ethiopian sun like cling film on his skin, head and heart swirling with thoughts of love and death and family, of chasing attachments that never were.

Despite the struck-match nature of the encounter with his birth mom, forgiveness was nothing that needed working out. In his mind, it was a given. His mother's betrayal had been in line with the pattern of Jason's world, an inevitable extension of all the other selfish acts adults had undertaken in Jason's life until that point. Nothing out of the ordinary.

It's nights like this that also find Dick not far outside his peripheral vision, crouching on a branch or a street lamp somewhere nearby, like a shadow watching over him, giving him the space he needs and the comfort of knowing he's not alone.

Jason shakes out a cigarette from the crumpled packet he keeps in his jacket pocket and averts his gaze from the chiseled letters that spell out his name. The butt of the cigarette touches his chilled lips to warm them, the gesture practiced, unconscious, and a tribute to the raw ache in his lungs. 

He flicks open his lighter, the latent flame inside bursting to life, fluttering in the cup of his palm like an anxious ghost tethered to the place of haunting, then flaring bright and yellow when it catches. The ember glows hot when Jason takes a long, burning drag and puts his zippo away, watching Dick make his slow, deliberate way toward him on the gravel path. Jason has faced too long in his direction, without even looking at him, but that was the signal: _look for me and I shall appear._

Dick looks like a wayward kid forced to go to Sunday school with his hunched posture and his fists that ball around the inside of his hoodie pockets. It's nights like this that Jason finds him most intriguing: raw pain -- valiantly held in check -- etching deeper lines into his face, the threat of rain following him like the scent of his hair, and a mulish set to his shoulders that says he's going to carry them both through this if he has to.

Because the echo of this night still resonates through the years, the shockwaves becoming less pronounced over time, but still strong enough to rock them. 

Dick comes to stand next to him, shoulder to shoulder, buzzing with a contained restlessness that tells Jason he needs more than just the casual proximity of acquaintances. Bandages still encircle Jason's torso from his latest brush with death, not too long ago, and Dick is afraid of doing what comes most natural to him: to touch Jason, hug him, hold him close. Jason wraps his arm around him and squeezes his shoulder. The high tension melts away from Dick immediately as he glues himself to Jason's uninjured side, head nestling in the crook of his neck.

"It seems too small to hold you, now," he murmurs in detached wonder.

The breath Jason expels is devoid of mirth or mercy. "Well, it didn't."

"Next time, I'll build you something bigger," Dick says, nervous fingers tugging at the hem of Jason's shirt. "A monument. A sepulchre you can easily walk out of again."

"Already thinking of getting rid of me again?" Jason asks, smiling with only his teeth. "Next time, cremate me."

The last thing he wants to be is an anxious ghost unable to escape his former hunting grounds.

Dick's hand clenches in the front of Jason's shirt, possessive, desperate to hold on, as if the strength of his grip would be enough to bind Jason to this life and to Dick's side. 

"It's like... I used to lay flowers on your grave. I talked to you as if you were still in there and could hear my words. It used to be a reminder of the past, of what we had all lost, but now... now it's a vision of the future."

Disregard the second date and it may well be. "We all die," Jason says, throwing the butt of his cigarette to the side, imagining the glowing ember setting fire to his grave and burning down his past with it. He folds Dick into his arms. "Some of us twice."

"I know." Dick snakes his hands gently around Jason's back and kisses the pulse point at his neck, as if wanting to taste the blood that is pumping through Jason's veins. (Again.) "I just want to believe in a life where we can both live until we're eighty and die peacefully in our sleep."

"You and your outlandish fantasies. Of course we are going to kill each other over which game show to watch."

It's nice to imagine normal futures for themselves when their present is anything but. When he wakes up every night staring not at his own grave, but Dick's. He has been to realities where he could run his fingers over the weathered headstone and feel every groove and pit in the texture. Where Dick's name evoked nothing more than a fond smile and a far-off gaze, as if he had been gone so long even the memories of him are distant.

Jason's death is a talking point that no longer holds the strength of an argument, seeing as how Jason has diluted its power with a heavy dose of sarcasm and self-irony. The topic itself has been talked to death, while the topic of Dick's has never even been breached. (Unless it was to invalidate his five seconds of apparent death that Dick will sometimes claim should be enough to gain him admittance to the Dead Robins Club.)

It's as if the world at large, themselves included, had decided that Jason is this fragile creature who will die whenever he so much as looks at trouble sideways, whereas Dick is an immortal who can leap from helicopters without a line and still land without a scratch. (The fact that he actually _can,_ depending on the altitude and the topography of the cityscape below is beside the point.)

Maybe, if Dick were actually immortal, Jason could rest easy knowing that Dick's recklessness and ignorance of his own limits were not misplaced.

Contrary to a persistent belief among his peers, Jason's worst nightmare is not dying again. He's come close many times since coming back to life and lost no more sleep over it than he'd already done.

No; Jason's worst nightmare is losing Dick -- the first attachment not to end in an inevitable let-down -- and having to live with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Labyrinth" by Kenyatta Rogers.


End file.
